Image Credit: Metro Nashville Police Department & tvovermind.com & Canva
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
A panel of six Davidson County judges ruled Monday that a “calamity of human and institutional errors” led to the release of a man who then allegedly returned to Mississippi and murdered his ex-girlfriend.
23-year-old Bricen Rivers was arrested in December 2023 and charged with kidnapping and beating his then-girlfriend 22-year-old Lauren Johansen. He remained in jail for several months.
In April 2024, Rivers made a motion to have his bond reduced from $250,000 to $150,000. Despite objections from the prosecution, Judge Cheryl Blackburn granted the reduction, primarily because Rivers did not have a criminal history.
As a condition of that bond, Blackburn required that Rivers wear a GPS monitoring device and remain in Davidson County.
Rivers posted bond on June 24. $75,000 was paid by Brooke’s Bail Bonding and the other $75,000 by On Time Bail Bonds. When he was released, neither the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office nor the bonding companies were given a copy of those conditions.
According to Julius Sloss, Chief Deputy Clerk for the Davidson County Criminal Court Clerk’s Office, one of their employees failed to include those conditions when the release was sent over. Agents from the bonding companies signed off on the release, but never actually saw the conditions.
When Rivers was fitted for a GPS tracking device, no location restrictions were set. Additionally, the company used for tracking is owned by an employee of Brooke’s Bail Bonding.
Four days later, on June 28, the company was made aware of the location conditions and called Rivers back in to set those.
When Rivers returned, the employee did not turn him back in to police because she felt she was acting as the monitoring company and not as a bonding agent. He left town 2 hours later and was tracked to Biloxi, Mississippi, until the battery on his device died. Johansen’s body was found in the trunk of a car on July 3 in Gulfport, Mississippi.
The judges noted nine different concerns with the way that bonding, release, and GPS tracking were handled. However, they determined that neither bonding company violated any rules.
“Obviously a calamity of human and institutional errors occurred in the release process of the Defendant,” the judges wrote. “Ultimately, however, the cause and responsibility for any violations of release conditions, including the commission of additional criminal acts, rests squarely with the Defendant himself.”
